Joseph Belbruno Blog

  Ukraine hones strikes on Russian energy sector  Intel li gence-led raids deep in enemy ter rit ory tar get crit ical ‘nodes’ that are hard to repair  Financial Times UK 30 Jul 2026 CHRISTOPHER MILLER Ukraine has shif ted its long-range drone cam paign against Rus sia’s energy industry from broad attacks on refiner ies to more tar geted strikes on crit ical com pon ents that are hard to replace. Ukrain ian mil it ary plan ners, drone oper at ors and energy spe cial ists say Kyiv’s goal is no longer simply to start fires at refiner ies or des troy stor age tanks but to keep plants offl ine for longer and make each strike more costly for Moscow. One Ukrain ian deep-strike unit mem ber told the FT the strategy was “tar geted and co-ordin ated”. Pres id ent Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week end that he had instruc ted Ukraine’s newly appoin ted com mander-in-chief and act ing defence min is ter to expand the coun try’s deep-strike cam paign. Yevhenii Khmara, the incom ing d...

Byte Dance’s plan to dominate AI The Chinese company behind Tik Tok is pouring resources into artificial intelligence, but some investors and analysts think it is a big gamble as they question the sustainability of the technology’s boom. Financial Times Europe30 Jul 2026By Zijing Wu and Eleanor Olcott Dur ing the sum mer of 2023, inside a con ver ted brick ware house in down townShang hai, dozens of Byte Dance staff embarked on a secret mis sion. The project had no name at the time and its engin eers only knew they were part ofthe “AI innov a tion” unit. Their first task was to build the Chinese com pany’s nextsuper app, an AI chat bot for the masses akin to OpenAI’s Chat GPT. Byte Dance had once before broken the dom in ance of global tech giants with itsaddict ive short-video app Douyin, which later became Tik Tok in over seas mar kets. The Shang hai unit spent two months build ing a pro to type chat bot, draw ing on vastcom put ing resources and exper i ence build ing con sumer applic...

  Rapid growth of commercial Chinese space sector a threat, report warns Financial Times Europe30 Jul 2026DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO EVA XIAO China’s com mer cial space industry has grown enorm ously since being opened toprivate invest ment in 2014, said the think-tank’s report, with the num ber of com -pan ies engaged in space activ it ies, such as launch ser vices and satel lite com mu nic a -tions, rising from a few dozen to 600. Aerospace man u fac tur ing cit ies are being built across the coun try and the num berof loc a tions and facil it ies to launch rock ets car ry ing satel lites is also increas ing. Atleast 10 start-ups have emerged as com pet it ors to the state-run Long March rock etsthat pre vi ously had a mono poly on car ry ing Chinese satel lites into space. While many of the com pan ies in the report are ostens ibly com mer cial, many workclosely with the Chinese state and are help ing to cre ate space eco sys tems that bene -fit the People’s Lib er a tion Army. “The US ...

  How exposed is the UK to the second China shock? Financial Times Europe30 Jul 2026Sou maya Keynes sou maya.keynes@ft.com As China’s goods exports soar and its imports sag, its biggest trad ing part ners arereact ing dif fer ently. The Amer ic ans are tak ing a “not our prob lem” atti tude, while(re)build ing their tar iff wall. The EU is anxiously con sid er ing new trade bar ri ersbut strug gling to agree on the details. What of a middle power such as the UK? As“China shock 2.0” hits, can this small island relax and let the cheap stuff roll in? The most basic argu ment in favour is that Bri tons are acutely aware of the cost ofliv ing, and embra cing China’s out put means lower ing it. Over the past couple ofyears, UK goods prices have risen by 2.4 per cent. Megan Peters of Gold man Sachshas estim ated that the force of China’s trade flows pre ven ted them from rising by afur ther 0.8 per cent age points. Who doesn’t want a cheap elec tric car or bus to helpwith the green trans i...

Beijing’s Next Play for the South China Sea How China Is Normalizing Its Control Lynn Kuok | July 29, 2026 In April 2025, Chinese coast guard personnel stepped onto Sandy Cay, an uninhabited sandbar in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and unfurled the Chinese flag. In much of the world, this act passed almost unnoticed. But as China’s first formal, on-the-ground assertion of sovereignty over an unoccupied land feature in more than a decade, it signaled a broader shift in Beijing’s quest for control: China is again contesting disputed land features, after years in which disputes over rights at sea have been the primary source of conflict. Beijing’s targeting of unoccupied features, which is not limited to Sandy Cay, reflects an important change since its last major island-building campaign. Between late 2013 and 2015, when the bulk of that work took place, China dredged sand and coral to enlarge seven features it already occupied, later constructing military and civilian f...

  L'Arabia Saudita in guerra: perché ora, e cosa cambia La loro discesa in campo così plateale rivela un formidabile errore di calcolo della leadership iraniana L'Arabia Saudita entra in guerra : cambia gli equilibri del Golfo? L’operazione congiunta dell’aviazione americana e saudita contro le milizie filo-iraniane in Iraq arriva a breve distanza dagli annunci sulla possibile fornitura di tecnologia nucleare (civile) da Washington a Riad. Che segnali arrivano, sul posizionamento strategico del Regno? I sauditi per quanto ricchi e armati fino ai denti non potranno modificare gli equilibri strategici del conflitto; però la loro discesa in campo così plateale rivela un formidabile errore di calcolo della leadership iraniana , che continua a compattare il vasto fronte arabo alleato degli Usa. Per molti mesi il principe saudita Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) ha cercato di tenere insieme due strategie apparentemente contraddittorie. Da una parte ha conservato l'alleanza militare con ...